If you sell training courses or are contemplating about selling online courses of any kind, it won’t take you much digging to find a Teachable review. Teachable is one of the most popular platforms for selling online courses. There is a plethora of feedback available regarding Teachable. Aside from the fact that it is highly comprehensive, what makes this one the finest of them all (in my opinion) is the fact that it was written by someone who has:
More than twenty years of experience working in the e-learning industry, with a particular emphasis on companies that sell education and sell courses (as opposed to, for example, corporate training departments, that do not have to convince their learners to buy)
Extensive expertise designing, creating, and putting into action digital learning environments (I was the founder and CEO of an e-learning platform and course development company)
More than a decade of expertise tracking and analyzing online course platforms, as well as assisting people and organizations in selecting the optimal platform for the sale of online courses
personal and practical expertise in the development, marketing, and facilitation of online educational opportunities.
Teachable and the other providers that have arisen as a new class of course platforms in the past several years have been the subject of extensive research and observation from my end. These are platforms that, in comparison to traditional learning management systems, sometimes known as LMSes, are significantly easier to use and less expensive. They are a true boon for single edupreneurs and small firms who want to enter into the expanding online course market and generate smart passive income, and they are a blessing for everyone who wants to learn more about online courses. I believe that over time they also have the potential to create substantial disruption in the market for traditional learning management systems.
Now that we’ve covered all of that, let’s get down to business and begin.
Teachable Overview
Teachable is, in general, a straightforward and reliable teaching platform that can be utilized by individuals and those who run online businesses and wish to construct their own online schools and sell courses. Because the user interface is straightforward, your students won’t have any trouble accessing your courses or navigating through them.
Teachable is not a learning management system that is more suited to the requirements of your company’s corporate learning or your organization’s external training demands. Teachable is an affordable learning management system that offers features that are primarily aimed toward the creation of courses and the sale of those courses. A learning management system of this sort is going to be expensive.
In my perspective, its strongest suit is the video-centric material that it offers. Teachable also excels when it comes to providing easy tools that assist in the process of selling your first online course. For instance, the sales, checkout, and thank you pages that can be customized by users are some examples of these resources.
It is also important to point out that Teachable is a major player in its field, and one of the most significant, if not the most significant player overall. Given the vast number of businesses that have just entered the market in an effort to provide online course platforms, this is an extremely significant point. Within the next few years, a significant number of them will have vanished. It is not likely that Teachable will.
Teachable is, in general, an exceptionally powerful and user-friendly platform that enables users to develop and market their own online courses. It is difficult to find a platform that can compete with Teachable in this regard.
Now that we’ve got everything out of the way, let’s dive deeper into the Teachable experience.
Building your Online Course Website
My own opinion is that you should not rely on an online course platform as your primary website, even if it is really good. (The only exception to this rule is if you use a platform that combines several functions into one, such as Kajabi.) Having said that, Teachable, much like the vast majority of other platforms in its category, provides a variety of options for designing and branding the site where your course material will be stored.
Teachable provides enough options and customization capabilities that, even if you are just starting out, you could, in fact, rely on it as your primary web presence for at least some time without experiencing too much of a steep learning curve. This is especially true if you are just getting started. The following is a concise overview of the most important aspects that are under your control.
Custom Domain: Having a custom domain is essential for the continued success and expansion of your SEO efforts throughout time. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have your own custom domain if you plan on starting an internet business to sell the products you make. In Teachable, the address for your school will be a subdomain of Teachable.com by default – for example, learningrevolution.teachable.com – but with any Teachable paid plan (beginning at $39 per month), you have the option for adding a custom domain – for example, learn.learningrevolution.net. In Teachable, the address for your school will be a subdomain of Teachable.com by default – for example, learningrevolution Teachable branding, which appears on all of your site pages as “powered by Teachable” if you do not upgrade to the Professional level or higher, can be disabled once you upgrade to one of these plans.
Teachable is pre-loaded with several default navigation links and some standard Web pages, but you have the power to alter these at any time. In Teachable, you have the ability to quickly and easily create links to both the primary navigation and the footer menus. These can link to sites that you build, and a very good feature is that you can easily manage who sees which menu items: users who are logged in, users who are not logged in, or all users. These can link to pages that you make.
Because of these characteristics of Teachable, you are able to add as many pages as you want to your website and manage who sees them. However, you should be aware that there is no drop-down menu or side bar navigation available. Therefore, it shouldn’t take long until your menus begin to appear cluttered.
Blog – In contrast to a significant number of its rivals, Teachable gives you the option to incorporate a blog within your school’s website. If you already have a blog elsewhere, this may not be relevant to you; but, if you don’t have a blog or merely want a place to publish content that is directly related to your classes, this may be very useful for you. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions in the past, a well-written blog is one of the most significant assets that an edupreneur can develop for their business.
Custom Text: Teachable has some of the most extensive features I’ve seen on any platform for changing the default text in the system to language you choose. This allows you to make your courses accessible to a wider audience. This contains anything from links to e-commerce sites to buttons for navigating the course to notifications indicating a malfunction. To a large extent, it appears that there is nothing that you cannot modify to the language that you choose.
Custom Code: As was just said, the part of Teachable known as Code Snippets allows you to include your own customized CSS. This is also the section where users who are familiar with what they are doing can enter HTML and Javascript in your head tag. Users who are not familiar with what they are doing cannot do this. Users with a Professional license or higher can take advantage of Teachable’s Power Editor to make comprehensive changes to your Teachable theme. This feature is only available to users with a Professional subscription or higher. It is important to take note that Teachable states that the documentation for this capability is still in the development stage and that assistance is not given. If you decide to proceed in this manner, exercise extreme caution.
Creating Online Courses
Examining how simple it is to develop online courses, training courses, and other types of learning experiences within the platform in order to support your online business is an essential component of any quality Teachable review, as well as any other review of an online course platform. [Citation needed]
Setting up online courses and course pages in Teachable is pretty straightforward – well within the grasp of beginners, and perhaps a relief for experienced course creators who are tired of dealing with overly complex platforms. Beginners and experienced course creators alike will find Teachable to be an excellent resource.
When I first navigated to the Courses section of the administrative panel, one of the first things that jumped out at me was how blatantly Teachable is targeted around the sale of courses. You are required to provide some fundamental information, such as the name of the course and the instructor, during the process of setting up a course. In addition, you have the option of providing a search engine optimized (SEO) URL, page title, and meta-description for each course that you develop.
You also have the option to quickly upload a promotional video that can be shown on the sales page for the course as well as a thumbnail image that will be displayed in the catalog and on the interface for the course itself.
You need to have something to sell before you can even begin the selling process. In my perspective, the strategy that Teachable employs for the production of courses is fairly fundamental, and it gives priority to on-demand, video-based classes. Nevertheless, I believe that this will be adequate for the majority of people who develop online courses.
The course is broken up into sections, each of which contains lectures. You give the sections names while you are setting them up (for example, Introduction, First Module), and if you want to, you may change the word “lecture” with anything else that is more to your liking by using the Custom Text function that was explained earlier. Your lectures can include any combination of the following components: text that you put directly into Teachable; multimedia files (video, audio, PDF, etc.); quizzes; or text that you type directly into Teachable.
You can also incorporate live video streams or webinars straight into a lecture by making use of the “Add Code” option that is available under the Lectures menu. It is a good alternative, but most course entrepreneurs will probably find it to be too advanced for their needs. It would be nice to see an option that is more user-friendly for streaming video and Webinars.
Lastly, there is an option called “Drip” that gives you the ability to publish lectures gradually over a period of time dependent on the number of days that have passed since your students enrolled in the course. (Requires a plan higher than the Basic one)
Aside from the “Add Code” tool, I believe that most people who create online courses will discover that Teachable makes it rather simple to put up their first course, and the finished product appears to be both appealing and professional.
Learn more about Teachable here: https://bloggervoice.com/teachable-review/